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She tensed and looked up at me. “What’d you tell her?”

“Nothing. But your mom knows more than you think.”

She rested her head back against me. “When I told her we were engaged, her response was that this is what she prayed for. For me to settle down with a rich man, instead of trying to scam them.”

I leaned back and wrapped my arms around her. “In a fucked up sort of way, you kinda did.”

“I guess I did.” She laughed softly.

“For what it’s worth, I like learning about you. Where you came from. Even the parts you’re not proud of.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm.”

She sat up and placed her hands on my chest. The patio lights caught her face in a soft glow. I looked at her, trying to remember the last time I’d cared this much for someone. I couldn’t. There was no comparison. Every woman before her had been a placeholder for something I didn’t know I was looking for until she bulldozed her way into my life.

I’d been carrying the words for weeks. They’d come out so easily with Regina, the way the truth does once you stop fighting it. But saying them to Belle was different. Telling her I loved her meant handing her something she could break me with.

“What?” she asked, reading my face.

“I love you, La’Belle.”

My chest tightened as she bit her bottom lip.

“I told your mother while we were clearing up the kitchen,” I said.

“Wait. You told my mother before me?”

“That’s your biggest takeaway?” I asked.

“I’m just noting the sequence,” she said with a watery smile.

I was a little caught off guard because she’d been crying a lot lately.

“Say something,” I said when the quiet stretched too long.

“I want to say it back, but if I do right now, it’s gonna feel like a reflex.”

“I’m not asking you to⁠—”

She put a hand to my lips. “Shut up for a second.” She took a breath as her fingers curled tighter into my hoodie. “Since we’re confessing things again, there’s something I need to tell you.”

An icy feeling moved through me. The last time she’d started a conversation like this, she’d unloaded a decade of secrets on me.

“Am I gonna have to kill somebody else?”

“What? Dez, shut up,” she laughed, shaking her head. “I—I’m pregnant.”

Another soft breeze blew past as a siren wailed somewhere from the street below.

“What?”

“I’m pregnant, Dez. I took two tests…I’ve known for a few days.” She buried her face in my chest and let out a breath. “I was trying to find the right time, but there’s no right time. There’s never really been a right time with us.”

“I—” My heart was pounding in my chest. Every single thought I had was slamming into each other instead of forming into words.

“I can’t tell if you’re processing or about to lose it,” she said with a nervous laugh.